g r u t t y

May 30

“Kids play T-ball, then baseball; they play games and have practice every week and, if they’re serious about it, pre-season and post-season too. We never think, “Let’s have kids play baseball for eight weeks in seventh grade,” and then expect that in five years they can join the majors or even be on a college team. But for some reason we do this with civics. We say, “We’re going to have you do a penny harvest in fifth grade and a service learning project in tenth grade, and then we’ll teach you abstractly about government for a semester in twelfth grade.” Then our students enter the major leagues of citizenship, and we give them the vote and expect them to keep our country going. And that’s just crazy!” —

Meira Levinson talking about her new book No Citizen Left Behind. (via bostonreview)

Imagine what this country would be like if we put less emphasis on academics and instead we taught people how to eat, how to exercise, how to manage personal finances, how to think critically, and how to participate in their democracy.